Hetero of the Year by Carla

Content Notes:

• The Gaygalan Awards are given out by Swedish LGBTQ-focused magazine QX to celebrate LGBTQ+ achievements each year. They do indeed give out an LGBTQ+ award and a Hetero of the Year award. They do not, indeed, include a sports category— which seems like a huge omission to me?? At last year's ceremony, Omar and Edvin won the Duo of the Year award, and Young Royals won the TV Program of the Year award. This year they're nominated for those same awards, and also Omar and Edvin are both individually nominated in the TV Star of the Year category (they were also nominated last year, but they lost that award to Christer Lindarw). Cirkus is an arena in Djurgården where the gala takes place every year since 2006. This year's gala will take place on Monday, February 6th.



• Coke Zero (or Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, if you want to be technical, or even Coca-Cola No Sugar in some countries), is a zero-calorie caffeinated, carbonated drink produced by the Coca-Cola company. (Also the life-giving liquid that flows through my veins, but I won't go on that tangent here.)



• Shima Niavarani is an Iranian-Swedish actress, singer, and director. She has hosted and written for the QX Gay Gala twice: in 2017 and 2018. She is also the younger sister of Shebly Niavarani, who some in this fandom might recognize from the crime drama Gäsmamman, in which he, along with our very own Edvin Ryding, starred for six seasons.



• The idea of Wille presenting an award at the QX Gala, as well as the reception from the Gala audience to him doing so, was inspired by the time the real Crown Princess Victoria presented the LGBTQ of the Year award at the 2013 QX Gala to Jonas Gardell. She and her husband, Prince Daniel, had also won the Duo of the Year award in 2011. In 2021, she won the Hetero of the Year award, though there was no ceremony that year because of the pandemic. Last year, her younger brother, Prince Carl Philip, and his wife, Princess Sofia, presented the Hetero of the Year award to Benjamin Ingrosso. If I remember correctly, Lisa Ambjörn managed to take a picture of Edvin and Omar with the two royals back in the distance, captioned "the prince and the prince and the prince" (LOL). It should be on her Instagram somewhere, I think. So yes, the Swedish Royal Family has been quite involved with the QX Gay Gala over the last decade or so. That's pretty much the main reason this fic exists.



• The UEFA Women's Euro, offically named the UEFA European Women's Championship, is the biggest football (or soccer, if you're one of those ;) j/k) competition among women's national teams in Europe. It takes place every four years, alternating with the men's championship. Sweden has won once (the inaugural tournament in 1984), came in second three times, and third once.



• Wille's outfit for the first gala was inspired by (but slightly altered from) an outfit he wore at Cannes. Though certainly he has worn several different pastel-blue suits in the last year, and thank the universe for that, because he looks so damn good in that color. Simon's photo from the nominees montage in that same gala is from a photoshoot Omar did for VMAN magazine. Wille's outfit from his nominees montage is from... some social media video he did at some point? It was before I joined the fandom, so I can't remember off the top of my head, but I adore that outfit and wanted to incorporate it as well.



• The line Wille quotes as he reveals Simon as the winner is paraphrased from the line "Making me go crazy for your love" from Omar's song "Moving Like That," which I guess Simon sings in this alternate universe. xD



• Aftonbladet and Expressen are the two main tabloid newspapers in Sweden.



• Trondheim is the fourth-largest urban area in Norway. Bergen is the second largest. Oslo is, of course, the capital of Norway and its largest city. Reykjavik is the capital of Iceland. Tampere is the third-largest city in Finland. Helsinki is the capital of Finland and its largest city. Sundsvall is the 21st-largest urban area in Sweden. Göteborg is the second largest.



• Levi is the largest ski resort in Finland, located in the Kittilä municipality in Finnish Lapland. The one large (...ish) arena in Levi is, indeed, called "Crazy Reindeer" (Hullu Poro) and it is, indeed, attached to a hotel with accommodations and amenities that I've described as accurately as I possibly could from the opposite side of the Atlantic. It looks super cozy and beautiful, and I've definitely added it to my bucket list now, just sayin' (I just hope they have excellent heating because the cold and myself don't really get along).



• The northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, are the auroras (polar lights) that occur in the high-latitude regions in the northern hemisphere, usually above the Arctic Circle (near the North Pole). Auroras are rays, spirals, or flickers of colorful light that occur when particles ejected from the Sun that travel to Earth in solar winds are not repelled by the Earth's magnetic field but rather get trapped in the upper part of the atmosphere— an area known as the ionosphere. These particles interact with the charged oxygen and nitrogen ions there, releasing energy in the form of light. Auroras also happen around the Antarctic Circle (the South Pole), in which case they are called aurora australis or southern lights. The aurora season in Levi goes from August until the end of April.



• Hesburger is a Finnish hamburger restaurant chain, the largest in Finland and the Baltics. They do, indeed, sell chicken nuggets and french fries and BBQ dipping sauce.



• Ordjakt (literally "Word Hunt") is a game English-speakers might find similar to the "Categories" game, in which players have to write down names in a specific category starting with a specific letter. In the Spanish-speaking world we have a similar game (ironically) called "Stop!" or "Basta!" in which players have to write down one item in each category (people, animal, fruit/vegetable, book/movie, brand, that sort of thing), starting with one letter one player chooses at random each round. Each correct item gets you a point, and whoever has the most points after all rounds (you can play however many you want until you run out of letters) wins the game. (I loved this game as a child— is anyone shocked I ended up being a writer?)



• The Red Sea is a saltwater inlet that separates Africa from Asia. It is mostly known outside the area in the context of the Abrahamic religions, it being the body of water the prophet Moses parted using the power of God to save the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, drowning their enemies, and leading his people to their promised land in what is currently Israel, Palestine, and parts of Jordan. The story of this escape according to the Bible is narrated in the book of Exodus. Your mileage may vary on how much of it, if any, you believe.



• Déjà vu ("already seen") is the feeling that you've lived through your present situation before. The context in which Wille brings it up is not actually déjà vu, though— he's just making a joke. (If you're playing the "take a drink every time Carla uses the word 'hug' or 'embrace' in this fic" game, I hope you're okay.)



• The pin Wille wears at Stockholm Pride.



• A chaise longue is a long reclining chair popularized in France during the 16th century. Duchesse means "Duchess." A canapé is a type of ornate French couch from the 18th century framed in carved wood, with an upholstered bac and a single long seat rather than separate cushions.



• Solliden Palace is the summer residence of the Swedish Royal Family in Öland. Haga Palace, located in Solna, is the current residence of Crown Princess Victoria and her family.



• Hilma af Klint was a Swedish artist who lived from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th. Her paintings are considered some of the first abstract works in history. The af Klint that hangs at Haga in this fic is titled The Swan.



• Irony is, in its simplest form, when what you're saying or what is happening is the opposite of what you mean or what is expected to happen. There are many forms of irony and some of them are hard to pinpoint. The "Alanis Morisette" definition of irony (which isn't really irony at all) comes from Alanis Morisette's song "Ironic," in which she lists a series of specific situations which, for the most part, aren't actually ironic but more just funny or frustrating coincidences— such as getting nominated for the Hetero of the Year award when you're not even heterosexual.



• The Spider-Sense— better known by fans as the "Spidey-Sense"— is a kind of extrasensory awareness of nearby danger that Spider-Man has. Spider-Man is, of course, a Marvel superhero.



• Sanna Nielsen is a Swedish singer and TV host. She won Melodifestivalen in 2014 with her song "Undo" and went on to represent Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest that year. She came in third. She's participated in the QX Gay Gala several times, I believe, including winning the Song of the Year award in 2009 with her song "Empty Room." She was also recently alongside Edvin Ryding in the talk show Renées brygga.



• La La Land is a 2016 musical directed by Damien Chazelle and starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Simon's reference to "pulling a La La Land" refers to the 2017 Academy Awards ceremony, when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty incorrectly announced La La Land as the winner of the Best Picture Oscar, rather than Moonlight, which was the correct one.



• A coordinate system is a system that uses numbers (or coordinates) to determine the positions of different data points; for example, the Cartesian system, which presents data in a two-dimensional area determined by two axes: one horizontal (usually x) and one vertical (usually y). The origin of the coordinate system is the point back to which all data points refer to, usually in the center. In the Cartesian system, the origin is usually the point (0,0).



• TV4 is one of the largest Swedish television networks, the flagship channel of the TV4 AB media conglomerate. It has broadcast the QX Gay Gala for at least the past few years, not live, but a day or two after the event has taken place.